The third i-Mean conference will address the relationship between language and identity.

Following the i-Mean tradition, we seek to explore ways in which researchers can fruitfully work across methodological and disciplinary boundaries. We also welcome scholars from other disciplines who have an interest in the links between language and identity.

Conference aims
The conference aims to explore whether and to what extent bringing together different methodological and theoretical approaches can:
• enhance understanding of identity attribution in interaction
• lead to theoretically robust methodological innovation.
Exploring how speakers use language to claim an identity has been explored but also challenged in the various traditions (ranging from mainstream sociolinguistic theory to linguistic anthropology). In the broadly defined field of sociolinguistics there are many conceptualisations of ‘identity’. Through language we actively construct and negotiate our self and social identities. It is through language that we index, directly and indirectly, who we are/how we wish to be perceived and where we (want to) belong. We see identity as (not exclusively but to a large extent) a linguistic phenomenon, dynamic and constantly evolving.
Papers are invited from researchers working across different linguistic fields and traditions, focusing on any aspect of language and identity.

Main conference themes
• Constructionist and post modern approaches to identity
• Identity in spoken interaction: methodologies and methods
• Three waves of variation studies
• Variation, identity and language change, revisited
• Multimodal approaches
• The relationship between role and identity
• Culture, language(s) and identity
• Identity Theory and Social Theory